A Finnish man's critique of the billionaire Elon Musk seems to have gotten under the skin of the businessman-turned-political interloper.
On Sunday morning the Finnish man, Joni Askola, posted his criticism on the social media platform X, which was formerly known as Twitter before Musk bought the company.
"Elon Musk is rapidly becoming the largest spreader of disinformation in human history, hijacking political debates in the process. The EU must take action!" Askola's post read.
Then, to Askola's surprise, Musk replied with an obscene, outdated slur.
"F u retard", Musk wrote.
Askola noted that he does not follow Musk on X, and didn't tag him in the post.
"The fact he reacted was a surprise, but his style of reaction was not. He is a pretty pathetic person in my opinion. He's the most powerful man in the world and yet he yells at some random person like me in the middle of the night," Askola said.
Usually, Askola uses his X account to assist Ukraine via the Estonian aid group Help99.
"I gather followers on X, trying to get them to donate money for drones and SUVs," he explained.
Askola is a doctoral researcher at Charles University in Prague and lives in France, but also spends time in Finland at a cottage in the Uusimaa countryside.
"For example, Musk has shared a lot of disinformation about immigrants in England and Germany. Furthermore, as the owner of X, he's able to control the visibility of different content on the service, so I consider him a very dangerous person," Askola said, adding that he did not reply to Musk's response on the social media site.
"I don't want to risk my X account being deleted. Helping Ukraine is more important than responding to Musk, and a comment like that doesn't deserve any response," Askola said.
Since his brief exchange with the reportedly richest man on Earth, Askola has so far taken part in around a dozen interviews with Finnish and international media outlets.
In recent months, Musk has become involved in politics in the US. In November, president-elect Donald Trump announced that Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would lead the "Department of Government Efficiency", an entity which has yet to be established.
More recently, Musk used X to "lob insults and slurs" towards UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, with the South African-born billionaire suggesting he might donate tens of millions of dollars to the right-wing Reform UK party, according to the Guardian.
A number of individuals, businesses, cities and news outlets, including Yle News, have since closed their accounts on X after Musk took over the company in October 2022.
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